what is the worst thing someone has said to you, on DCUM?

[Anonymous]

that H1Bs are necessary to enrich the owners of Microsoft and Google.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been insulted a bunch. “Insufferable” is one that stands out recently, but it was based on an assumption about me that in fact couldn’t be further from the truth.

I figure, they’re not actually insulting me, they’re insulting a character they dreamed up in their head and projected onto something small I said.

Or they are a dopamine addict who needs a tiny hit, or a paid troll here explicitly to cause fracture in our society, because there’s a lot of that here, too. Whatever the case, insults have become predictable enough that they start to become invisible. Usually when they are directed at me I am able to look right past them.

I guarantee there are no paid trolls here calling you insufferable.

Oh I agree with this. I didn’t mean the “insufferable” comment was from a paid troll. That was just someone who took the worst possible interpretation of a question I asked.

But there are plenty of people who are so transparently trying to get fights started, it seems possible that they are paid for their effort. (And wouldn’t this site be a great target for an entity that wanted to create divides?)

Where can I get a side gig like this? Sounds like easy money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been insulted a bunch. “Insufferable” is one that stands out recently, but it was based on an assumption about me that in fact couldn’t be further from the truth.

I figure, they’re not actually insulting me, they’re insulting a character they dreamed up in their head and projected onto something small I said.

Or they are a dopamine addict who needs a tiny hit, or a paid troll here explicitly to cause fracture in our society, because there’s a lot of that here, too. Whatever the case, insults have become predictable enough that they start to become invisible. Usually when they are directed at me I am able to look right past them.

I guarantee there are no paid trolls here calling you insufferable.

Oh I agree with this. I didn’t mean the “insufferable” comment was from a paid troll. That was just someone who took the worst possible interpretation of a question I asked.

But there are plenty of people who are so transparently trying to get fights started, it seems possible that they are paid for their effort. (And wouldn’t this site be a great target for an entity that wanted to create divides?)

Where can I get a side gig like this? Sounds like easy money.

I see that you’re mocking me, and that’s fine. But it’s 2025 and we have years of documentation about malign influences actively trying to sway the conversation on boards such as this, including using paid commenters and AI bots. I’m not sure why the working assumption should be that they’re not here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my kids was diagnosed with a life limiting condition. They would eventually die about 14 months later so this was not a mild diagnosis.

He left the hospital dependent on a ventilator. As we were reeling and trying to figure out how to balance his new and enormous needs with those of his siblings, I posted here. People told me I was selfish for not putting my “normal” kids first 100% of the time, that he probably was so disabled he didn’t know I existed (note: his cognitive capacities were not impacted by his medical condition, but even if they had been, kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities know their parents exist), and that I was obviously exaggerating about his needs.

I am so very sorry on the death of your beloved child.
There is no excuse for what others responded to your post.

But unfortunately it is typical of some of the posters on here.

I honestly could never speak this way, even if I were 200% anonymous.
💔

+1. I’ve seen posters respond that way when people talk about illnesses of their children, problems with health care and I am so sorry to read those responses. It makes me feel like there are a few people on this Board who are sociopaths. I hope they know that nothing is truly anonymous on the internet and one day their descendants will read the toxic bile they posted and feel ashamed.

I am the PP who lost a child. I think that people desperately want child death to be the parents fault, so that they can feel safe. They want to think that I fed my child something they would never have fed theirs or that I did something terrible and karma got me.

Or they want to believe that illnesses like my child’s only happen to kids with ID or some other condition their kid didn’t have.

Look at the threads on here when a child dies. Jeff works hard to keep them cleans up but the parents are always blamed.

[Anonymous]

Someone called me a "kepitileast peeg" and I could not believe it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there are obviously accounts here that just seek to troll

Recommend a movie: "you clearly have bad taste in movies"

I've been called "disgustingly nouveau riche"

Asking advice for my daughter and bc: "you must be so proud that your teenager sleeps around so much"

"You just make yourself sound fat"

Mostly I just get called a liar ¯\_( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)_/¯

¯\_( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)_/¯

[Anonymous]

I was a very young step mom when I started out on this forum, no idea what I was doing. I asked a stupid question about how finances are handled between divorced parents because I truly had no one to ask and I got ripped a new one for pages and pages and pages. It was traumatizing and I didn't post again for years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not really an insult but at some point I wrote about a real (very weird) situation I was going through in my life and somebody called me a troll. Sometimes reality is wilder than imagination

Yep same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been insulted a bunch. “Insufferable” is one that stands out recently, but it was based on an assumption about me that in fact couldn’t be further from the truth.

I figure, they’re not actually insulting me, they’re insulting a character they dreamed up in their head and projected onto something small I said.

Or they are a dopamine addict who needs a tiny hit, or a paid troll here explicitly to cause fracture in our society, because there’s a lot of that here, too. Whatever the case, insults have become predictable enough that they start to become invisible. Usually when they are directed at me I am able to look right past them.

I guarantee there are no paid trolls here calling you insufferable.

If you are often insulted on DCUM in response to comments you have made, that's worth some self-reflection.

Nope. If someone calls you out in a way that bothers you a weird amount, THAT is worth self-reflection (as they've likely struck a nerve). But simply getting insulted a lot on here? That is just a function of posting here. I've seen people get attacked on these boards for literally every reason under the sun. People get attacked for being immigrants and attacked for being American. For being working moms or being SAHMs, for being interested in things and for lacking curiosity. People will insult you on here for existing, for breathing. Being insulted on DCUM is just part of being on DCUM, for better or worse.

I can't even think of the "worst thing" someone has said to me on here because after awhile all the angry, insulting posters kind of blur together and you don't really even see their posts. I am actually far more likely to be bothered by a post insulting someone else, which can trigger protective instincts. But someone insulting me? Eh, whatever, I do not take it seriously at all anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I started posting on DCUM during the pandemic (boredom + loneliness + anxiety over everything led me here -- I suspect I'm not alone in this). Even though I live in DC and had a 2 year old at the time, I wasn't even aware of the website prior to that.

I have been insulted lots of times though most of them don't really stick out and I can't remember exactly what people said. However I recall a time within my first year of being here where a poster was so cruel to me (repeatedly calling me a troll, ripping apart my posts and making fun of how I wrote, accusing me of sock puppeting, something I didn't even know about at the time) that it genuinely impacted my mental health for a few days. I remember I kept engaging with them to defend myself, and then reading these awful things they'd say to me in response, and becoming internally upset and leaving the site for a few hours to calm down, and then coming back again and repeating the cycle.

I finally recognized that they were intentionally baiting me, that my emotional reaction was obviously exactly what the wanted, and left that thread. I took a little break from DCUM after that, maybe a few weeks. But I eventually made my way back.

After that though, I discovered that when people would say rude things to me, I was better able to ignore them. Often I wouldn't engage, or if I did, it was in a detached way that didn't invite more debate. Not defensively. I learned, when I started threads, to mostly ignore the posters who would jump in right away to attack. I learned to report posts that were obviously against DCUM standards or totally derailing a thread.

In the end, I think the experience has been good for me. It's actually probably good for me to see the worst things people can say to me about my intelligence, my parenting, my personal choices. I am sure some of these are things people IRL have thought of me but never said. Confronting them on DCUM has helped me let go of the idea that it matters what strangers think of me. It's made me less defensive in general and more apt to write off people who are unfairly judgmental as simply not useful.

It's like going to grad school for dealing with vicious people. At first it tears you apart, but then you build back up stronger and wiser and with more tools in your toolkit, so to speak.

Now if someone insults me on here it doesn't even register. I know people have done it recently but I couldn't even tell you what they said. I skim over it and move on with my life.

Kudos to you PP for turning a negative into a positive. It is great that you are able to do that.
I try to do this too but many of the posts I've read here also remind me that people will act differently to your face IRL but what they are actually thinking comes out when they are not accountable (anonymous)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been insulted a bunch. “Insufferable” is one that stands out recently, but it was based on an assumption about me that in fact couldn’t be further from the truth.

I figure, they’re not actually insulting me, they’re insulting a character they dreamed up in their head and projected onto something small I said.

Or they are a dopamine addict who needs a tiny hit, or a paid troll here explicitly to cause fracture in our society, because there’s a lot of that here, too. Whatever the case, insults have become predictable enough that they start to become invisible. Usually when they are directed at me I am able to look right past them.

I guarantee there are no paid trolls here calling you insufferable.

If you are often insulted on DCUM in response to comments you have made, that's worth some self-reflection.

Nope. If someone calls you out in a way that bothers you a weird amount, THAT is worth self-reflection (as they've likely struck a nerve). But simply getting insulted a lot on here? That is just a function of posting here. I've seen people get attacked on these boards for literally every reason under the sun. People get attacked for being immigrants and attacked for being American. For being working moms or being SAHMs, for being interested in things and for lacking curiosity. People will insult you on here for existing, for breathing. Being insulted on DCUM is just part of being on DCUM, for better or worse.

I can't even think of the "worst thing" someone has said to me on here because after awhile all the angry, insulting posters kind of blur together and you don't really even see their posts. I am actually far more likely to be bothered by a post insulting someone else, which can trigger protective instincts. But someone insulting me? Eh, whatever, I do not take it seriously at all anymore.

Same. I hate when someone posts with vulnerability and earnestness and is met with cruelty and barbs.

And the comment that being insulted on here means you need self-reflection assumes that there is some way to win the so-called mommy wars. The whole poimt is that there is not. You are either neglectful or you’re a helicopter, either you’re sheltering your kids or you’re turning them into sl*ts and drug addicts. You’re failing to discipline, or you’re damaging them so profoundly that they will almost certainly cut you out of their lives when they have the chance. You feed them trash, or you’re giving them eating disorders. You are enmeshed to the point of ruining them, or you’re an absentee parent who didn’t deserve them in the first place. There’s so much bad faith judgement, much of it mutually exclusive; if you took it all too seriously, you’d make yourself crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been insulted a bunch. “Insufferable” is one that stands out recently, but it was based on an assumption about me that in fact couldn’t be further from the truth.

I figure, they’re not actually insulting me, they’re insulting a character they dreamed up in their head and projected onto something small I said.

Or they are a dopamine addict who needs a tiny hit, or a paid troll here explicitly to cause fracture in our society, because there’s a lot of that here, too. Whatever the case, insults have become predictable enough that they start to become invisible. Usually when they are directed at me I am able to look right past them.

I guarantee there are no paid trolls here calling you insufferable.

Oh I agree with this. I didn’t mean the “insufferable” comment was from a paid troll. That was just someone who took the worst possible interpretation of a question I asked.

But there are plenty of people who are so transparently trying to get fights started, it seems possible that they are paid for their effort. (And wouldn’t this site be a great target for an entity that wanted to create divides?)

Where can I get a side gig like this? Sounds like easy money.

I see that you’re mocking me, and that’s fine. But it’s 2025 and we have years of documentation about malign influences actively trying to sway the conversation on boards such as this, including using paid commenters and AI bots. I’m not sure why the working assumption should be that they’re not here.

DP and I agree with you, but I also agree that DCUM doesn't have an audience big enough (I dont think) for that to be the case. However, I see that kind of obvious paid troll stuff all over other social media platforms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my kids was diagnosed with a life limiting condition. They would eventually die about 14 months later so this was not a mild diagnosis.

He left the hospital dependent on a ventilator. As we were reeling and trying to figure out how to balance his new and enormous needs with those of his siblings, I posted here. People told me I was selfish for not putting my “normal” kids first 100% of the time, that he probably was so disabled he didn’t know I existed (note: his cognitive capacities were not impacted by his medical condition, but even if they had been, kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities know their parents exist), and that I was obviously exaggerating about his needs.

I am so very sorry on the death of your beloved child.
There is no excuse for what others responded to your post.

But unfortunately it is typical of some of the posters on here.

I honestly could never speak this way, even if I were 200% anonymous.
💔

+1. I’ve seen posters respond that way when people talk about illnesses of their children, problems with health care and I am so sorry to read those responses. It makes me feel like there are a few people on this Board who are sociopaths. I hope they know that nothing is truly anonymous on the internet and one day their descendants will read the toxic bile they posted and feel ashamed.

I am the PP who lost a child. I think that people desperately want child death to be the parents fault, so that they can feel safe. They want to think that I fed my child something they would never have fed theirs or that I did something terrible and karma got me.

Or they want to believe that illnesses like my child’s only happen to kids with ID or some other condition their kid didn’t have.

Look at the threads on here when a child dies. Jeff works hard to keep them cleans up but the parents are always blamed.

Yes, this happens every time. Every single time. It’s unconscionable.

I am so sorry for your loss.

[Anonymous]

“Idiot”
I’ve gotten that several times. I don’t take it personally. I’ve seen it lobbed at many others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve been insulted a bunch. “Insufferable” is one that stands out recently, but it was based on an assumption about me that in fact couldn’t be further from the truth.

I figure, they’re not actually insulting me, they’re insulting a character they dreamed up in their head and projected onto something small I said.

Or they are a dopamine addict who needs a tiny hit, or a paid troll here explicitly to cause fracture in our society, because there’s a lot of that here, too. Whatever the case, insults have become predictable enough that they start to become invisible. Usually when they are directed at me I am able to look right past them.

I guarantee there are no paid trolls here calling you insufferable.

Oh I agree with this. I didn’t mean the “insufferable” comment was from a paid troll. That was just someone who took the worst possible interpretation of a question I asked.

But there are plenty of people who are so transparently trying to get fights started, it seems possible that they are paid for their effort. (And wouldn’t this site be a great target for an entity that wanted to create divides?)

Where can I get a side gig like this? Sounds like easy money.

I see that you’re mocking me, and that’s fine. But it’s 2025 and we have years of documentation about malign influences actively trying to sway the conversation on boards such as this, including using paid commenters and AI bots. I’m not sure why the working assumption should be that they’re not here.

DP and I agree with you, but I also agree that DCUM doesn't have an audience big enough (I dont think) for that to be the case. However, I see that kind of obvious paid troll stuff all over other social media platforms.

PP. I don’t know the audience size. But I would think having so many people so close to power on one site (DMV, many high net worth, many working directly in federal government or in government-adjacent roles) would make these forums worthwhile regardless of audience size? Quality of audience even if quantity isn’t there.

Really don’t know. Can’t know, so I assume the worst I guess.